


White Flag

by xSeshatx



Series: Peter Parker: Future Hearts [17]
Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Peter Parker, Kidnapping, Pain, Parent Pepper Potts, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Has A Heart, oh shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22496518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSeshatx/pseuds/xSeshatx
Summary: Peter is kidnapped and he is dying. Truly dying.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: Peter Parker: Future Hearts [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/993498
Comments: 6
Kudos: 264
Collections: The Best Irondad/Spiderson Fics, The Best Peter Parker Whump Fics





	White Flag

**Author's Note:**

> White Flag - Daughtry

Peter knew not to put all of his faith into his spider sense, but sometimes, it was hard not to. He caught a glimpse of _something_ out of the corner of his eyes, and he thought about checking it out, but his sense was quiet. So quiet. So, he didn’t. He walked into the bathroom, already putting the fact that he might have seen something out of his mind and went about his business. For a moment.

He knew he was about to get attacked. Not at that moment, but the glimpse he saw earlier made another appearance only a minute later. While he was washing his hands, he saw the corner of a mask appear around the corner in the mirror, and he recognized that mask. He knew what was going on. He washed his hands, dried his hands, and then pulled out his phone, trying to casually send a text in a nonchalant way like most teenagers probably did before they left the bathroom (that’s what bathroom breaks were for, anyways). Before he could finish the text and send it, his sense screamed at him to duck, so he complied, dropping his phone in the process. He fell to the ground, squatting low with his hand on the floor in front of him which was one of his typical Spider-Man poses. Standing in front of him, previously behind him, was someone he couldn’t remember meeting, but he knew they met. Without hesitating, the man started attacking. He was throwing well-placed punches that Peter could barely avoid. Peter ducked and dodged, but he received one good hit to his face, and he fell down, unconscious.

Happy was freaking out. He went to Peter’s school to pick him up, but he wasn’t there. He waited a few minutes for Peter to come out then called Peter’s phone a few times only for it to ring and go to voicemail each time. He went inside the school, talked to the principal, and the principal called some of the teachers to ask when’s the last time they saw him. They found Ned and MJ who hadn’t seen Peter since lunchtime. They pulled the cameras, watched Peter enter a specific hallway after lunch, and then, to Happy’s trained eye, he saw how the videos were all altered. Peter walked into the bathroom and never came out, but that couldn’t be true. Peter left the bathroom and then footage of an empty hallway replaced the authentic footage.

Principal Morita led the way as they rushed to the bathroom, but Happy knew Peter wasn’t going to be in it. The anxiety was bubbling in his stomach. Even before the adoption, he cared for the kid, and now that Happy was a glorified uncle to this kid? The more Peter went through, the more Happy understood those jokes about ‘if anything happens to ___ I’ll kill everybody in this room and then myself.’ 

When they saw that the bathroom was empty, Happy got Tony on the phone, ignoring Morita who was making his own phone calls. Before Tony could say anything upon answering, he broke the bad news. He didn’t want to. This was going to hurt Tony a thousand times more than it was hurting Happy. Everybody would have thought that most of the issues Peter went through would directly relate to him being Spider-Man, but half the time, Peter was out as himself when there was something, and that made it harder to handle for everybody. “Peter isn’t at school. We don’t know where he is.”

“ _What?”_

“I’m sorry, Tony.”

There was a brief pause. Happy could think of, in that short time, at least a handful of things Tony could be doing during that pause. He could be suiting up, he could be contacting Pepper, he could be calling Peter’s phone, he could be tracking Peter’s phone, he could be searching the internet for a spotting of Spider-Man, or he could just be processing his information. “But his phone is at school. His backpack must be there, too.” So, Tony was tracking.

“How do you know his backpack is?”

“His stuff is in it. At least, his stuff is at school. Inside his backpack or not, they’re there.”

His stuff? Happy thought about it for two seconds and realized it was his suit Tony was talking about. His webshooters more like it, not the whole suit. Peter hadn’t returned to being Spider-Man yet, but he still kept his shooters near him just in case like he always had. He had shooters, he had a suit, and he had one of Tony’s high-tech upgrades that built the suit around him. Peter didn’t keep a suit in his backpack, but he normally wore his shooters or kept the high-tech suit in his pocket if he went without a backpack. Sometimes he kept both on his person. Everything had location and a health monitor. “All of it? He usually keeps something on him.”

“I don’t know, it’s all at school. Peter’s not?”

“The camera feed was altered,” Happy said, a little quieter so the principal didn’t hear. Everything was a security threat now. “I think he’s planning on calling the police. Or is already on the phone with them.”

“I’ll be there.”

He’d be there in a few minutes, Happy knew.

Happy also had Peter’s tracking on his phone. He never used it, but he had it available, so he pulled up the tracking just to see where Peter’s phone was. It showed that they were on top of the phone, so Happy walked back into the bathroom and searched. It wasn’t on the floor or in the stalls, so he looked in the trash. It wasn’t there. Then, he lifted the back of a toilet up and saw it in the water. He reached inside to pick it up. It wasn’t damaged or anything like that, but it was stowed there. He put in Peter’s password (they all knew it) in the small chance that there was something useful on it. To his surprise, there was. Peter had his text conversation with Tony opened on his phone, and he had a message he typed but evidently didn’t get the chance to send.

Masquerade man is

This was worst-case scenario. Masquerade man? Was Peter referring to the attack he went through almost two months ago? He had to be. That attack was someone wearing a masquerade mask, but he was arrested. Did this mean he escaped and figured out Peter’s true identity? Joseph Rich was his name. Happy did a quick google search and didn’t find anything about an escape, so he did a search of the jail system to see if he was still an inmate, and he was. So, either his deduction of it being Joseph Rich was wrong, Joseph Rich was working through somebody else, or the prison guards didn’t notice that an inmate was missing. If it was the latter, people were getting fired.

There were feet running down the hallway. Happy looked up and it was Tony, who had flown in as Iron Man, though he had the nanotech fade out by the time he got there. The feeling Happy had must have shown on his face because Tony somehow looked more scared than he did initially. “What do you know?” he asked. Happy tossed him Peter’s phone, unlocked. Tony only looked at the phone for a couple of seconds before the look on his face changed from worried to scared. “The guy from before?”

“That’s what I thought, too. Somebody knows who he is, Tony. I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t care.”

“Tony?”

“Is he okay? _That’s_ what I care about. The rest can wait.” Tony turned towards the principal angrily. “How can someone walk into the school and take my kid? How?”

“Mr. Stark, are we sure it was a kidnapping? Please don’t take offense, but Peter _has_ been known to cut class. It hasn’t happened in a while, but he used to disappear semi-frequently.”

“His phone was hidden in the toilet. _The toilet_. The camera feed was altered. He went into the bathroom and never came out. Happy, are there windows in the bathroom?”

“No windows.”

“ _So where the fuck is my kid?”_

Peter woke up slowly with a headache. He knew immediately what was going on; he didn’t forget the attack. He woke up slowly because everything hurt. He didn’t really want to experience what was going on. He was sitting on a chair, tied up. There were ropes around his midsection, his shoulders, and his ankles. His hands were handcuffed behind him around a pole, and that kind of irritated him. It was probably a basement, then, because some basements had those stupid support beams/poles scattered throughout. He was just glad it was a small pole because it didn’t feel like his shoulders were ripping from their sockets. Just a minor annoyance. He also realized that his ankles were handcuffed together in addition to the rope. Whoever attacked him really didn’t want him to move.

A thought crossed his mind. He barely registered it before he pushed it from his mind. What if they knew he was Spider-Man? It went through his mind once and then he pretended it never existed. That couldn’t be the case.

It was time to take stock of himself. He knew what kind of restraints he was dealing with, but he hadn’t really paid attention to what parts of him were hurting. His head was throbbing, his stomach was nauseous, and something about his knee didn’t feel right. When did he knee get hurt? Why was he still hurting? How long had passed since he was knocked out? It couldn’t have been long if he was still hurting, thanks to that healing of his. He had just had lunch, he knew, when he was attacked, and he slept fine the night before, so his healing should be as good ever.

There was something else, though…Something that didn’t quite sit right, and when his brain come up with the answer, his eyes opened up and he was wide awake.

It was the guy who attacked him before and almost killed him. Peter remembered what happened the last time. Almost dying and all. That’s where that lingering feeling of impending doom at the back of his mind was coming from. He had been through this before, only he was Spider-Man at that time. Now, he was just puny Peter Parker. Which meant that there was somebody out there who knew his identity, and he thought this person was in jail. Now he was terrified. When would the pain start? The confusion? He was unclear about the last attack still. He couldn’t figure out the correct order of events. He didn’t _remember_ most of the events. He still didn’t remember the attack.

The man in the mask was just watching him. He hadn’t felt him there at all before opening his eyes, so his sense wasn’t doing much for him. How did this guy constantly get passed the sixth sense Peter had? “Who are you?” Peter asked, choosing to speak first. Speaking first, for some reason, made him feel a little bit in control of the situation. If he was injected with the same stuff as last time, he probably didn’t have that much fight in him for much longer. He’d use it now. “What do you want?”

“I am Doctor Adroit.” If Peter wasn’t scared out of his mind and could handle banter, he’d laugh at the guy and try to figure out where in the world that lame name came from. What, was Doctor Clever taken? Had to find an obscure word for clever that only the most cleverist of clever people could figure it out? It even took Peter a few seconds to remember what that word meant, and he’d never be able to pull it out of nowhere. He hated this guy now for more reasons than just the obvious. He was probably a hipster, and not the cool or unique type. The irritating type of hipster who did everything before it was cool and had to be different from every single person out there, even other hipsters. He probably put a lot of effort into being the biggest hipster jerk. Idiot.

“What do you want?” Peter asked for a second time. “Why am I here? What did you give me?” He was asking too many questions, but there was a lot he wanted to learn about his current circumstances.

“One question at a time,” the man said, and then he added, “Peter Parker.” Just to make Peter more scared. He had his face and his school, and now he had his name, too. It didn’t scare Peter as much as this man had probably hoped it would. He was already kidnapped.

“What did you give me?”

“I would think you’d be a little…acquainted to the feeling.”

He used that word just to sound cool, but his sentence sounded stupid. Peter was probably lucky he was scared; he’d get himself hurt with the roasts he was thinking of for this guy. Instead of responding to that, Peter elected to pretend he didn’t know what he was talking about. Maybe if he didn’t acknowledge the fact that this guy thought he was Spider-Man, then this guy would stop thinking he was Spider-Man. He hadn’t said it just yet, but there was no way this was a coincidence.

“What do you want with me?”

“I do not like losing, Peter Parker, and I’ve lost because of you. Twice.”

Yeah. Definitely knew he was Spider-Man.

“Okay, so what are you going to do with me?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I could use you to get something out of Tony Stark. I could kill you to stop you from causes me more losses. I could keep you here for as long as I want.”

“I’m _really_ not trying to get cocky and mouthy, but there’s no way you can outsmart the Avengers. You can get around me, maybe, but they’re a different breed. If you want to come out on top, I promise you, this isn’t the way to do it.”

Luckily, the man (Peter refused to think of him as Doctor Adroit) didn’t seem too angry. Instead, he kind of chuckled behind his mask. “I believe that you believe that,” he said. “I can’t fault you for your thought process, exactly. Not many can go toe to toe with the Avengers. I, however, can.”

Did he forget the fact that he lost to the Avengers only about two months ago? Was that memory lost on him? What was this dude on about? “He would kill for me,” Peter warned in a final attempt to make him change his mind out of self-preservation. Because Peter wasn’t going to beg for his life. He wasn’t even going to ask for his life. He didn’t particularly care to. He was stronger than that. He was Spider-Man. He could withstand whatever this dude was going to give to him. “He’d do it without a second thought.”

“I know he would if he was given the chance, but he won’t get the chance. They’re never going to find us, not if I don’t want them to, and if I have to leave, I know places I can go without detection. But you’re not worried about me here. You want to frighten me enough to let you go.”

Part of him was getting emotional while the other part of him was getting emotionless, and that was a confusing thing to feel. “I just want to know what to expect.” The fact that this man hadn’t attacked him now that he was awake was weird. The fact that there was no torture was weird. The fact that he seemed relatively nice enough to hold a conversation was weird. It was unexpected. He also wanted to know why he was wearing a mask. Peter didn’t remember his name and definitely didn’t remember a face, but his name and face were both known to the rest of the Avengers, so hiding from Peter would do no good. It was the Avengers he had to hide from. If Peter did manage to escape, he wouldn’t have to give a description of the man because they already knew who the man was.

This man could sneak past his Spidey sense. This man could cause Karen to malfunction, which he did the last time he was attacked. Karen couldn’t contact Tony when the attacked happened. He could manufacture a drug that essentially attacks the mutant cells inside of him. He could also, apparently, hide from the Avengers, at least this time, because they hadn’t found him yet and he _knew_ they were looking. None of that could have really been anticipated. Nothing had been anticipated. 

A sigh from the man was also unexpected. “I’ve decided what I’m going to do with you.” He stood up, coming closer to Peter, and from someplace above them, he grabbed a syringe. “I’m sorry, Peter,” he said, “but like I told you earlier, I don’t like losing.”

Was this going to be a fatal dose? If it wasn’t fatal, was it going to be as bad as last time? Was it something else entirely? He already felt traces of something in his system, so what would adding more do? He felt the medicine course through his veins, and it _burned_ , but the burning only lasted a few seconds. He was out cold before his mind finished screaming in pain.

Tony hadn’t stopped flying throughout the city, searching for any sign of Peter. It had been almost eight hours since Peter’s last sighting by his friends at school. How could he, Tony Stark – Iron Man, not find his own kid? The whole team got together, like they did every time something happened with Peter, and they could not find any trace of Peter, either. Where could they have gone? Natasha tried to recover the lost footage in the school’s cameras, but even she failed at that. The cops were trying to take charge of the search, but nobody could really deny the Avengers from helping. Peter was declared missing after four hours.

“Tony, come home.” Pepper was trying her best to convince Tony to take a break, but she wasn’t convincing. This was her kid, too. “It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s getting late.”

“Exactly. There’s going to be less stuff going on, so if anything happens, I’ll have a better chance of seeing it.”

“Tony…”

“We gotta find him, hon.”

She was crying, not for the first time that day. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. I just worry about you, too.”

“Boss, you’re gonna want to see this,” Friday cut in. “Pepper, I’m sending it to your phone, as well.” She played a video in his suit, and Tony’s heart dropped. It was Peter.

Peter was tied to a chair. His head was down and his eyes were shut, so he wasn’t conscious. A man from behind the camera walked onto the screen. He was recognizable immediately by his masquerade mask and his three-piece ball suit. He stood in front of the camera, blocking Peter, and spoke. “Tony Stark. I have your child,” he said. “I must admit, finding out that he is your child came as more of a surprise to me than it should have, in hindsight.”

This man just confirmed in this video that he knew Peter was Spider-Man. He hadn’t said it out loud, though. Was he planning on it? Or was he going to keep this secret for an unknown reason?

“I didn’t meet you face-to-face last time. I’m sorry for that. I so would have liked to talk to you in person rather than having to take over the news channels in order to get to you.”

Tony hadn’t realized that. Friday didn’t preface the video saying, ‘hey, you missed this important news broadcast that was live across the entire world showing your kid knocked out.’

“It is unfair of me to try to talk to you when you weren’t expecting it, but I’m sure a few days is long enough for you to plan for our conversation. This Saturday at four o’clock in the afternoon, I’ll be back online. I expect you to find your way into a livestream of your own so we can…chat.” The man turned around and moved closer to Peter, grabbing his arm and shaking him too rough. It took more shakes than it should have to wake him up, but Peter’s eyes did open. Even from the distance between Peter and the camera as well as the bad quality of the video, Tony could see the unclearness in his eyes. “You remember what happened the last time, Stark? I’m sure you do. I’m sure you remember it every single night when you go to bed that you almost lost him thanks to me. I wonder what four days of this is going to look like. I didn’t get to see how he was last time, but you brought in the Avengers, so I’m sure it was not a pretty sighting. At least now I’ll see it with my own two eyes.” He walked towards the camera and then the feed stopped, but not before a groan could be heard coming from Peter. He was in pain.

“Come home,” Pepper said after many moments of silence. “Regroup, okay? Make sure everybody is up to date, sit down for a few minutes, and then you can continue your search. Please, sweetie?”

She asked. She said please. She was impossible to say no to. Pepper was just as hurt by Peter’s disappearance as Tony was. Him coming home was best for her, and she was smart, so it was probably best for Tony to take a break. “I’m on my way now.”

Peter didn’t feel good. His head was swimming and he was pretty sure he threw up on himself at some point, but the memory of doing so didn’t exist in his brain. The smell did, though, and that only made him feel the need to throw up again. “I really am sorry, Pete,” the guy said, and Peter had almost forgotten that this guy was there. “You seem like a good kid. It was Spider-Man I want to get rid of. I remember watching the press conference when the world found out about you.”

Was Peter really above asking for mercy? He wanted to be put asleep. He didn’t want to be conscious. He was in pain. So much pain. Even his finger nails were filled with immense pain. “Don’t call me ‘Pete’,” Peter said, trying to sound as normal as he could.

The man sighed. “You don’t need to be like that, kid. I’m trying to tell you this is nothing personal.”

“If it was nothing personal, I wouldn’t be hurting right now. I’d either be dead already or kept in a room unharmed.”

“To be frank, I expected the dose I gave you to kill you already,” he said. “I had to change my plans when you didn’t die. I’ll negotiate with Stark in a few days and we’ll see what kind of agreement we can make.” This guy tried to kill him? Legitimately? Peter thought that this was just torture. It was very successful torture, of course, but he didn’t think he was actually gonna die the last time he was conscious. Now the thought was fresh in his mind. “I was going to give you another what should be fatal dose,” the guy continued, “but everything happens for a reason, including you surviving what I estimated had been a lethal dose. It’s inspired me.”

There was still time. Peter got so much worse throughout the day the last time. He had no idea how much time was passing, so he had to anticipate himself getting a lot worse. He was injected, passed out almost immediately, and now he was awake again and in pain after the man woke him up. It could have been twenty minutes or two days or two weeks.

“When you started throwing up while you were unconscious, I, admittedly, almost regretted my decision. I felt guilty for my decision. I am conflicted. I’m nothing if not honest.”

His vision was blurred. Had it been that blurred before, or was the blurring a new symptom of the poison that was swimming through his bloodstream? How bad was it that Peter couldn’t remember if his vision had been blurred prior to him noticing it? Speaking of not noticing something, why was there blood in his mouth? Was it blood? It had to be; nothing else tasted like iron in the same way that blood did. Was he hit in the face or was it coming up his throat or did he bite his tongue? So many possibilities.

“You spaced out for a second there, Pete. Back on Earth?”

He spaced out? How could he space back in? When did he leave Earth? He was just talking to this man.

“Again? Next time you’re going to throw up, give me a heads up, will you? You don’t need to keep adding to the vomit on your clothes. I’ll hold up a trash can for you.”

He didn’t remember throwing up once, but this man said ‘again’ so that meant he threw up multiple times. He knew he could smell it before, but honestly, it could have been anything. If he didn’t remember throwing up, he probably hadn’t thrown up. That’s how everything worked. Peter didn’t have a bad memory, unfortunately. He was stuck remembering every bad thing that has ever happened to him, even if he had a tendency to space out and losing track of time and experiences and…memories. Okay, maybe he lost track of memories sometimes, so anything was possible. Maybe he did throw up. Multiple times. Enough times for him to smell as bad as he did.

The next time his brain focused enough for him to, well, focus, the man wasn’t there, which was strange, because he was _just_ there. Where did he go? How long had passed? Peter’s body was tensed up. He was so tensed up that he couldn’t actually move all that much. It was more restraining than the actual restraints that had been used to keep him from escaping. Why was his body so seized up? It had to be from whatever the man (what was his name again? He knew it was something stupid) injected him with.

He couldn’t see. Not really. He could see some shapes moving in the darkness. His peripherals could see light, so that meant the room wasn’t that dark, which meant that his sight was going bad. It went bad all at once, too. One second, he was staring at the chair where the man had been sitting, and the next, all the light died away. Most of the light. Yet, despite the lack of vision, the room was spinning. Everything was spinning even when his eyes were closed, too.

There was pain all over. He couldn’t name one spot on his body that wasn’t screaming and yelling and filled with a sensation so painful that he couldn’t fathom even existed. His head was seconds away from exploding, it felt like, and the sweat that trickled down his trembling corpse felt like an erupting volcano; there was no end in sight for the lava that burned everything in its path with zero remorse.

Screams filled the air, so loud and piercing and shrill. He knew that he had to be the one who was creating that painful sound, yet that noise had never come from his body before. Words escaped his lips after his brain begged him to hold them in and contain them like prisoners in a high-security prison on lockdown. “Please stop the pain.” “Please finish me.” “Please, I don’t want to live like this anymore.” Pitiful sobs from inmates who were not prepared to see out the rest of their life sentence.

Pepper forced Tony to get some sleep Friday night. He hadn’t slept a wink in the three nights that Peter had been missing, and Saturday was going to be a very big day that Tony needed to be rested and prepared for. Anything could happen with the livestream that might save Peter or kill Peter. Or, they could be given the news that Peter was long dead. They didn’t know what to expect, so being sleep deprived wasn’t an option. Not a good option, at least.

“Even when I was in the cave,” Tony said, voice quivering as he reminisced about becoming Iron Man, “I never felt as helpless as I do right now.”

She understood. Peter was her kid, too. A lot of tears were shed. “Peter’s a survivor,” she said, sitting on Tony’s lap and holding his face in her hands. “He’s strong.”

“He doesn’t _want_ to live. What if…?” What if he gave up?

“But what if he _didn’t_?” she countered. “What if he’s holding on for you, Tony?”

“And you.”

“Me and him aren’t as close as you and him.”

“I had a head start,” Tony said. “I think Peter saves the…softest parts of him for you.”

No matter how many tears she cried, she wasn’t cried out. More came to her eyes. “He’ll be okay. Let’s believe that until we have reason to believe otherwise, and we don’t. We do, however, have every reason to believe that Peter is a fighter. He’s brave. He’s strong. He’s a survivor. He’s determined. He’s _stubborn_. Let’s not worry about if he’s okay. Let’s worry about how we’re going to want to homeschool him and keep him trapped within our sights for the rest of his life to keep him as safe as we can.”

It was easier said than done. Tony rewatched the footage that Peter’s kidnapper aired to the public the day he took Peter at least a dozen times a day.

When the livestream popped up on the television, everybody’s hearts started beating in their chests. There was Peter. He was still wearing the same clothes and was still tied to the same chair, only he looked so much worse than the last time when he was passed out on the camera. He was filthy, he was bruised, and he was awake. Not wide awake, it didn’t look like, but awake, nonetheless. Alive. Covered in blood. Absolutely soaked in it. Tony remembered the way Peter’s nose bled the last time. It was nearly impossible to stop.

Tony was Iron Man Tony in that moment as he turned on his own livestream. He wasn’t going to come on this stream and beg for Peter’s life. He was going to ask the man what he wanted and see what happened from there. He had a whole team waiting to track the livestream. They couldn’t trace the source from the first livestream, but they were watching it _after_ it aired. Maybe they’d have better luck while it was airing.

It took some time to figure out how to livestream something while this criminal was holding his own livestream, but they were able to put the two livestreams side-by-side on every news channel on the planet. “Tony Stark.” Hearing his own name never made Tony so furious before. The man appeared on the frame, standing until his entire body could be seen by the camera. “It’s been a long time coming.”

“Quit the small talk. Let’s get to the real reason we’re here; my kid.”

“I do have some questions about Peter,” the man said thoughtfully. “Did _you_ do it?”

‘It’ he said. What? What’s ‘it’ supposed to be? When he realized what he meant, he made sure not to make a face. Did he make Peter Spider-Man was the question. “I did not, and that has nothing to do with why we’re here today.”

“It does, actually, but I digress. You want to know how you can get Peter back, right? Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“That is exactly why we’re here. What do you want? Money? Revenge? What is it?”

“Revenge, initially.”

Tony’s voice. He thought he heard it but brushed it off. His brain was making it up because he was dying and dying people probably thought of the people they loved as they were dying. But the voice came back again, along with the voice of the person who was causing him to die. Peter’s eyes opened a little wider and he tried to see past the darkness. Was Tony there? His dad was there?

Peter moved. Tony saw the movement behind the man. His leg twitched and his head lifted a little bit. He wasn’t too far gone, then. Tony could work with that.

“Initially. Something’s changed. What changed? What do you want now?”

“I want insurance that this will never happen again.”

“You lost me.” 

“I keep losing. I’m not a loser, Stark. I’ve never been a loser.”

Joseph Rich was his name, and he was one of the biggest losers out there. When Spider-Man got him arrested the first time, Tony learned that he was a former student at MIT who got expelled. He was jobless for most of the time after that. The jobs he did manage to get only lasted a short amount of time before he was fired, and he was constantly getting arrested for something or another. Spider-Man busted him beating some girl up – his wife. When he got out of jail for that, he stalked and attacked Peter _and then_ got beaten by the Avengers the very same day as the first attack and was put back in jail. He was the definition of a loser ever since he got kicked out of MIT.

“Cut the crap. You have my kid. Tell me what you want so I can get my kid back.”

He was Tony’s kid, so Tony was talking about him. Tony was trying to find him. It would be easier to be found if it wasn’t for all of those stupid restraints covering his body. He pulled at his hands from behind his back. It took too many tries for him to be able to move his arms. He didn’t know how long it had been since he was taken, but he hadn’t moved since before that, plus his muscles were strained and tensed, so it took him some time to push through. When he managed to, he tried to pull his wrists apart. Metal on his wrists? Handcuffs. He had almost forgotten. He had the strength to get out of them. He just had to find it.

“I told you; I want insurance that this will never happen again.”

“Yeah, you said that already, and somehow, despite the repetition, I don’t follow.”

Something snapped behind his back. At first, he thought it was the handcuffs, but the pain told him it was something in his hand. Or his wrist. Arm? There was pain but he couldn’t tell exactly where it was, just a general location. Of his arm/wrist/hand area. He just broke his own bone. He was Spider-Man! How did that happen? How was his body that weak?

He was Spider-Man.

He forgot he was Spider-Man. There was no suit involved in making him who he was, so he didn’t need his suit to be Spider-Man. Spider-Man didn’t need webs. He tried again to get out of the handcuffs, and it was painful, but it worked. His hands were free of the handcuffs. He did the same to rid the handcuffs from his ankles. He still had the rope to deal with, however. That would be more challenging.

“If I let Peter go, I might lose again. If I don’t let Peter go, I’ll be running from and fighting the Avengers for the rest of my life. Neither of these are good options for me.”

“Yeah, you put yourself into a real predicament there by making the decision to kidnap my kid.”

“I didn’t intend to kidnap your kid.”

“And yet, here we are.”

God, his body hurt. He hurt. His stomach hurt, his head hurt, his face hurt, his brain hurt. Everything hurt. He could barely move which was unfortunate because moving was his only way of escaping. He had to escape. Tony was looking for him, and so far, he couldn’t find him. Peter had to make it easier to be found. If the Avengers hadn’t found him yet, he’d need to do his best to give away his location. How could he give away his location when he didn’t even know his location? He didn’t know, but he was going to figure it out.

He knew he heard Tony’s voice, but Tony wasn’t there. So, there was a phone call or video chat set up. This guy must have had some serious tech if Tony hadn’t successfully traced the call yet, so there was a lot of work for Peter to do in his half-delirious state of mind, but he wanted to go home. The work would be worth it.

“I want money,” the guy said. Declared. Said with so much conviction like he knew he was going to get that money.

“I figured that. How much?”

“Ten million. Give me ten million, a jet clean of trackers, and the promise that you’ll stay away from me for the rest of both of our lives.”

Was it really that easy? If it was that easy, he could have said so days ago when Peter was kidnapped. It would have saved so much time.

“Done,” Tony said with no hesitation. “Now tell me where I can find my kid.”

“I’m afraid I cannot just…leave Peter.”

“Yeah, I don’t follow, because I thought we had just come to an agreement for me to get him back.”

“I keep losing because of him, Stark. If I leave him behind, it’ll be another loss. I’ll be taking Peter with me, but if you give me what I have asked for, then he will be alive and healthy until he passes away naturally.”

The rope snapped from around his body easier than he thought. He thought he used up all of his strength breaking the handcuffs, but now the rope was falling from him. The rope, he figured out, was the only thing keeping him up on that chair, though, so he fell with it to the ground.

Tony watched Peter fall behind Joseph Rich, and the man saw or heard it, too, because he turned away very quickly. “Stay away from him,” Tony said, losing some of the tough-guy persona that he intended on preserving. Please stay away from Peter. Please don’t hurt him anymore. There is blood covering my kid, please do not add to it. This man did not listen to Tony’s thoughts that begged him to let Peter go free. He slammed his hand onto the top of the camera and then approached Peter quickly with something in his hands – probably another injection. “Leave him!” Tony shouted.

This man – _why couldn’t he remember this guy’s stupid name?_ – grabbed Peter’s hair and slammed it hard against the floor. “Stay down, Peter,” he said, almost pleading. “I don’t enjoy hurting you.”

If he was going to die, which he knew was happening, he was going to go out fighting. The feeling of impending doom had been filling the back of his head since, well, he couldn’t remember, but it must had been a while, and it was spreading throughout his body. He knew, instinctively, what his body was warning him of. He had a vague memory of feeling like that before, but his thoughts were too jumbled then to retain memories and was too jumbled now to pull memories. He’d go out swinging. Fighting. He’d go out making life as hard as he could for this man who was murdering him.

After his head hit the floor, he reached his arm up with as much strength as he could. He felt it connect with the man’s face. He wished he could say that it was a hard hit, that despite dying, he managed to fight with as much strength as he had even fought with before, but that wasn’t the case. The hit was a good hit for someone who was dying, but it was merely an annoyance for this man. A nuisance. An inconvenience.

Tony didn’t know if he wanted to be proud in Peter’s fighting actions or not. On one hand, he was trying to protect himself and give himself a chance. On the other, what if he just expedited a death sentence? Did Peter have a plan? Was he waiting until this moment because of a plan nobody but Peter knew? Was this Peter’s end-of-life rally, where he had a sudden burst of life before death? He wanted to stop his thoughts from being morbid, but Peter was dying the last time after hours with that drug in his system. They were on days now. There was no way Peter was fairing any better than he did last time.

One thing was clear; Tony could not breathe.

“You’re going to fight _now_?” the man asked. “You’ve just been taking it for days, but _now?_ ” He definitely did sound inconvenienced.

Words. He had to find words. He had to find a way to talk. How long had it been since he last spoke? His throat was swollen to the point where he could barely breathe. How was he going to manage talking? He had to find a way. He had two words he wanted to say. He tried clearing his throat, but there was too much stuff. Dried blood? Probably dried blood.

“Screw you.” The words escaped his lips before he realized he had found his voice. He kicked his leg high in the air from his position on his back and nailed this criminal right on the side of his head. When that caught him off guard, Peter pushed himself up with what had to be the will of God Himself and sent the sharpest elbow of his life right into the guy’s temple. He threw his hand out to find something, anything to use as a weapon, and his hand stuck to the remains of one of the ropes. The guy tried to retaliate, sending his fist towards Peter’s face, but Peter moved his head away at the last second and brought up the rope, wrapping it around the neck of bad guy. He had no leverage and he needed to fix that. He rolled backwards, over his head and onto his feet and, in the process, had the rope wrapped tightly around this guy’s neck. He pulled and pulled and pulled, trying his best to stay on his feet long enough for this guy to fall unconscious.

He heard a body fall hard to the ground and it took him a few seconds to realize that he wasn’t the body. His feet were still firmly – loosely, more like it – planted on the ground. His hands were still stuck to the rope, but a quick shake got rid of them. He turned, trying to find the camera or phone or _whatever_ was the source of Tony, but his eyes hadn’t picked up on his last life memo. He stumbled after taking a couple of steps, and then he fell completely. 

Tony watched with first amazement as Peter seemed to come back to life and then with horror as he fell face first into the floor. “Peter!” he shouted, “Pete! Hey, kid, c’mon, don’t let that be the end. Hear me?”

That was Tony’s voice, and Tony was talking to him. He heard him. Where was his voice coming from?

“Please, kid, help me. Help me find you. Please, before he wakes up.”

“How did I do that?” he asked. He still had a voice?

Tony let out a laugh. It was a relieved laugh. Peter was still conscious, so he could still help. “Because you are one hell of a fighter, Pete. I’ve gotta be honest with you, we have no idea where you are. Absolutely no idea, but you have a camera. I need you to grab the camera and find a way outside or to a window so we can see where you are.”

That was too many words and he lost track of each sentence as they were said. The pain in his body had been momentarily forgotten in the middle of the action, but it was creeping back with a vengeance. If he didn’t move now, he’d lose the strength and the will to. He crawled his way back to his feet. Somehow. “Slower?” he asked.

“See the camera?”

“I can’t see.”

There was no time to pause to process that information. There was only time to roll with it. “That’s okay. You can hear me. Walk towards my voice.” Peter obliged because finding Tony sounded like a really good idea. “A little to the left, kid. That’s good, now go straight. Okay, you’re getting close to the camera. Stop. It’s right in front of you now.” Peter reached out and found a laptop. He picked it up and turned it around so Tony could see what Peter should have been able to see. He was able to pick up some shapes and some light but there was no way he could create a picture in his mind.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said as he limped forward. “I-I don’t really know what I’m doing.”

“You’re doing beautifully. Don’t ever apologize for something like this. Talk to me.”

“My brain isn’t clear. I don’t know how I’m awake.”

“I don’t know either, but let’s not question it. You said you can’t see. Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s so dark.”

“Are you in pain?”

“So much pain.”

“There’s stairs in front of you. I’m gonna need you to go up the stairs.”

That sounded impossible, but so did getting out of his restraints. How was his brain still functioning enough? Not long ago, he thought he was imagining Tony’s voice. Was the drug wearing off? He doubted it. “I don’t think I can do it.”

“You can do anything. Take the first step. There’s not that many.”

He ended up crawling up the last four or five stairs, but he did get up. Then, in common horror movie fashion, his foot was grabbed before he could stand back up. “Peter Parker, were you holding out on me? You didn’t try to fight back before. I was almost convinced I found the wrong person.”

It was kind of lame to say that Tony gave him strength, but that was the case. “Get off of me,” he said, whining and begging and almost crying. He kicked his legs out and scrambled to his feet, taking the laptop with him as he attempted running.

“Peter, Pete, there’s a door to your right. All you gotta do is get outside and we’ll find you.” Tony’s voice was panicking which made Peter want to panic, too.

He went to his right and found the door, pushing it open as he ran. It wasn’t exactly running because he couldn’t run. It was barley putting one foot in front of the other, but it was as close as he could get to running. The man grabbed the back of his shirt as he stepped outside and the laptop went crashing to the ground. Peter followed only a second later with the man landing on top of him.

“You could have lived,” he said to Peter, pinning his shoulders to the ground with one arm. “You could have lived a long life if you just _didn’t fight_.” Peter felt another injection, and the tears he had been fighting to hold in came out. The pain instantly increased beyond anything imaginable, but Peter shook his head.

“This isn’t how I die,” he said, struggling below the weight of the man. He wasn’t giving up, not when Tony was on the line. His death was going to be private, something Peter dealt with alone. Maybe that was why he had this surge of strength; maybe the physical strength came from the mental strength. Dying was one thing when Tony wasn’t there. He gave the biggest headbutt of his entire life and instead of wincing in pain like he wanted to do, he gave a second one, and then a third one, and then a fourth one. Fighting. Metaphorically scratching and clawing for his own life. More tears escaped his eyes with each hit, but he didn’t stop. He kept going and going and going until the weight on his chest got heavier with the deadweight of an unconscious man.

Peter shoved the man off of him, but he couldn’t force himself to stand up. He couldn’t force himself to sit up. What he could force himself to do, however, was keep his eyes open. Stay awake. Staying awake was useful. It was safe. Staying awake meant fighting because if he let himself pass out, that would be him giving up. He wasn’t giving up, not when Tony was there.

Wait.

Not when Tony was there?

The moment, the second, the millisecond, the _instant_ the camera feed went from indoors to outdoors, Tony was in his suit and in the air while Friday scanned the entire internet for a picture that resembled where Peter was. He was in danger, even more dangerous danger than before, and Tony wasn’t about to listen to his kid die. Moments past, and it wasn’t the longest time, but it felt like forever before Friday got a hit from _Google_ of all things that matched the feed. She pulled up a map on his suit and he took off.

He didn’t let himself think about what Peter would look like in person versus a low-quality laptop live feed because that would only distract him. Tony caught a glimpse of Peter and it only made him go faster. He landed and before he could come to Peter’s aid, he watched Peter throw his head over and over at Joseph Rich until Rich fell unconscious. Tony ran over after raising his face mask and helped Peter push this man off of him. Before anything else, he reached over for the laptop and smashed it, ending the footage that was _live to the entire world_. The world didn’t need to see any of it. Everybody could get their torture porn and touching reunions somewhere else. “Underoos, hey, you’re okay,” he was saying, but Peter was staring up at the sky cluelessly. “Peter? C’mon, buddy, now isn’t the time to zone out. Friday, connect the team. Bruce! He’s in bad shape. I’m sending my coordinates. I need someone to come here before I kill this man.”

“His injuries?” Steve asked. Steve, not Captain America.

“I don’t know,” Tony said. “Kid, please say something. Anything.”

Tony was kneeling above him, saying words. He knew Tony was there. He heard his voice and felt hands on his cheeks. Tony was there.

“Dad?” he said, his voice weak now that the fight was over.

“Oh my god,” Tony said, “yes. God, yes, I’m here. You’re okay. You made it outside.”

“You found me?”

“With the camera outside, we were able to match up what we saw with images we pulled from the internet. Wanna guess what we used?”

“What?”

“Google maps.” Peter laughed as hard as he could. It turned out to be only a few heavy chuckles, but his amusement was conveyed because Tony laughed, too. “Google maps helped us find you.”

When Tony flew there, he hadn’t noticed how _close_ it was. Peter was being kept right on the other side of the Hudson in New Jersey. It was only a few miles away from the Tower. It was _so close_. Peter was being held so close to his home and nobody could find him. Union City, New Jersey? Tony could spit at that city from the top of his Tower. It was heartbreaking. Right under their noses.

The Quinjet arrived not long after because of how close the Tower was. Bruce was the first off, racing over with their ‘Peter is in trouble’ emergency bag. Tony moved over so he wasn’t the only person hovering and put his energy into trying not to cry into Peter’s hair.

Peter looked horrible and he smelt just as bad. Vomit, urine, blood, sweat. He was covered in all of it. His skin that wasn’t covered with any type of substance was cracked so bad that it looked ready to leak blood. His eyes were bloodshot. Not just bloodshot, but the tears coming from them was actually blood. He was crying blood. That was just his face, too. Tony didn’t have time to take in the extent of injuries all over his body. Bruce could do that. 

Steve was there, too, and Natasha, and Clint. The three of them went over to Rich’s body, and Clint checked a pulse. Silently, he shook his head. Tony almost couldn’t believe it. He watched those headbutts. They were hard, sure, but they didn’t look deadly. Natasha, though, noticed something else. In his hand, which was held against his side, was the syringe he must have used on Peter. It was empty, and the needle had come _out_ of him. He must have accidentally impaled himself. Killed himself.

“Tony, we need to move him,” someone said. Peter recognized the voice, but he couldn’t place it. He was able to place Tony’s voice and that was enough.

He lost time there. Or, more likely, he lost consciousness. When he came to next, he was moving. It was too much movement that made him sick to his stomach. “G’nna puke,” he managed to say moments before he did. Someone turned him onto his side so he didn’t choke on his own vomit. He apologized when he finished.

“I never wanna hear you apologize again.” It was Tony. He was still there.

“Where are we?”

“The Quinjet. We stopped at the Tower to grab things for Brucey here can help you on the fly upstate. You’ll be safer there.”

“I gave you the same medication as last time,” Bruce said. That was the voice he recognized before. “We don’t want to risk having Tony fly you back. You’re not in great shape.”

“Terrible shape,” Peter agreed. “Hurt. Broke my wrist.”

“We know,” Tony said, his voice not portraying the tears that were in his eyes and had been there for a long time now. “It’s bent all outta shape.”

“I broke it.”

“ _You_ broke it?”

“I was trying to break the handcuffs. My body is dying.”

“We’ll get you healthy again. You’re not dying anymore.”

“You give me strength.”

“You give yourself strength.”

“No. You give me strength.” Peter took a deep breath, realizing for the first time that he was being given oxygen. He hadn’t realized how oxygen deprived he had been. His chest felt a little lighter. “I couldn’t fight back until I heard you. I didn’t want to.”

“Why didn’t you want to fight, kid?” Tony’s hand was in Peter’s hair which was probably disgusting. Peter had no idea what was in his hair. He had no idea what was on his face, his clothes, his anything. He was gross.

“It was easier not to fight. Everything hurts _so bad_.”

“Were you tied to that chair the entire time?”

“I think,” Peter said. He kept blinking his eyes, trying to get the darkness to leave. He wanted to see Tony. “I don’t remember much. I don’t think I was ever untied. He mostly left me alone.”

“I’m sorry, Peter,” Bruce prefaced, “but I need details. What are we dealing with?”

We. A simple word made him feel so much less alone. “I, uh…” Was he thinking clearer? It felt like it. He could actually figure out where exact pains were coming from. “I think I messed my knee up. We didn’t really, uh, fight much. Not until today, so most of the pain is from whatever he gave me.”

“Scale of 1-10?”

“For my knee?”

“Overall.”

“Eight, now,” he said. He wasn’t in as much pain as before. “It was at an, uh, fourteen or fifteen before.”

“The medicine is working then?” Tony asked. “I thought he would switch it up.”

“It feels like it’s working. He gave me a lot of higher doses, he said. The first one he gave me was meant to kill me. I don’t know why it didn’t. He didn’t, either. It _feels_ like it’s trying to kill me, but I keep just…not dying.”

“That’s not something we’re going to complain about,” Bruce said. “Maybe your healing is a lot more powerful than we’ve thought.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s gone, Pete. He won’t hurt you anymore,” Tony said after hesitating.

“Did I…?”

“No. He did this to himself. We don’t know if it was on purpose or an accident, but he did it himself.”

Once that news sunk in, Peter cried. He didn’t know why he was crying, either. Was it relief? Remorse? Was he overwhelmed? Thankful? Mad at himself because he was thankful? All of the above was the correct answer.

He was asleep most of the time he was healing. At first, he had asked Bruce (privately, without Tony present, because Tony had stepped out to use the bathroom) if he could give him enough pain medicine to put him to sleep for a little while as his body fought to heal himself. He explained how he was in pain and scared and so, so tired, and Bruce agreed to ask Tony without mentioning that Peter was the one who requested it. “I don’t want him to think I’m trying to numb myself, or anything,” Peter had explained. Eventually, Bruce dialed back the medicine, and Peter kept sleeping off and on. Naturally. The antidote for the drug did put him to sleep, too, but when that wore off, Peter kept sleeping.

It wasn’t consistent, but Peter slept through the better part of a week before Pepper stepped in. “You’ve slept enough,” she said when Peter woke up after a thirteen-hour sleep. “I want to keep you down here in medical for the rest of your life, but I think it’s time we got you out of bed.” Peter had only been to the bathroom and back since he was rescued, and he never asked for more, unlike the last attack where he kept trying to go to his room to rest.

He never asked for Ned or MJ to come over. He hadn’t even talked to them yet. He hadn’t talked to any other member of the team besides Bruce. He asked Tony to keep them from visiting while he was awake. When Tony asked why, Peter answered with a shrug. Really, Peter just wanted to rest until he wasn’t exhausted. Socializing was exhausting, even with his friends and family, so he wanted to limit how much he socialized. He had to talk to Bruce because Bruce was his doctor at that point in time, and no part of him wanted to go anymore time without Tony and Pepper. Everybody else, he wanted to see. He wanted to talk to. But he wanted to sleep more because he was so tired, so drained. His body was taking too much time to heal completely. His wrist was still broken, his knee was still swollen, and his body was still sore. When he healed and could go two hours without needing to sleep, he’d ask to see the team and then ask for his phone so he can text his friends. He had no idea where his phone even was. He said he didn’t want it, so Tony didn’t give it to him.

And also? He didn’t want to address what happened. He’d have to address it whenever he finally started talking to others, but he didn’t want to. The entire world knew what happened to him. When Tony said that, expecting Peter to have already been aware of it, Peter lost his mind. He knew that there was a video chat, but he didn’t know it wasn’t a private affair. He already had to talk to the police about it which sucked. Talking to people he knew about it after they probably watched it would suck so much more. 

“Out of bed?” Peter asked, squinting at the light after Pepper turned it on suddenly. He had _just_ woken up. The light hurt. “Why?”

“Because, while I know you’re still healing and resting, you’re going to start wallowing,” Pepper answered honestly. “You’re okay enough to sleep in your own room, so we’re gonna start with moving you up there. You’ll get a good shower in your own shower. Then, we’ll see what happens next.”

“Is this something I have to do, or do I have the right to refuse?”

“If you say no, we’ll stay down here,” Pepper said as she took a seat beside him on the bed. “But I’d really like it if you gave this a chance. I think you’re ready. If you don’t think so, then you can say no.” Pepper gave him a choice which felt like he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t disappoint her, so he nodded. “Great. Then up, let’s get moving.”

Bruce said that his knee was hurt but not to the point of needing crutches. He had a brace he was supposed to wear whenever he wasn’t in bed (that he never worse because he never walked further than a few feet for the bathroom). Pepper grabbed it for him and helped him put it on for the first time. He had a brace on his wrist as well that he kept on at all times, only taking it off in the shower or for Bruce to check it out. He slid out of bed, wearing the same pajamas he had been wearing for three days now, and cringed at how cold the floor was on his feet. Pepper helped support his weight whenever he took a step on his hurt leg. Slowly, they made it to the elevator. He was almost panting from the effort.

“I talked to Ned a little bit ago,” Pepper said. “They’re worried.”

“I know.”

“Have you thought about calling them? Ned and MJ would probably appreciate hearing from you. It’d calm them down.”

“ _Them_. I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Why aren’t you ready to talk to them?”

“They saw what happened.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“I never wanted anybody to see me like that. None of you. It’s easier to look at you despite knowing that you saw the footage because, well, you’ve seen me at my worst. Ned and MJ haven’t really. They’re still kind of…ignorant about my life as Spider-Man. I don’t even know if they know that Rich took me because of Spider-Man and not because of who Tony is.” It hurt a little bit saying the guy’s name out loud. He finally knew the name. He heard it before, but the name didn’t stick. Now, it did. He’d never forget it.

“They know,” Pepper said. “I understand. I’m sure they will, too, whenever you’re ready.”

“I’ll think about calling them,” Peter amended. “I might be okay with it if we just pretend nothing happened.”

“That won’t last forever.”

The elevator had opened up not that long ago, but Peter was too busy talking to focus on walking. It seemed that, for the time being, he was going to need to pick walking or pick talking because the thought of doing both felt like too much brain and body power. They walked over to Peter’s room and he sat down at his desk, sighing heavily. “Why is it so hard to walk?” he asked her, as if she was the doctor.

“You’re still healing,” she said, trying to be comforting.

“I can climb the Tower in less than a minute and use no energy.” He had to pause to take another breath. “I get winded walking from the elevator to my room now.”

“You’ve been sleeping for the last week and restrained for days before that. Now that you’re going to be up and moving more often, this won’t be a problem.”

“Do you know that for sure?” he asked, worried. “What if this is just how I am now?”

“Bruce isn’t worried, so let’s not worry either. Sound good to you?” When he nodded, she nodded, too. “Alright. Shower and put on real clothes.”

Real clothes didn’t sound fun. “We’re not going anywhere, are we?”

“No but put on real clothes anyways. I’ll go make something to eat. When you’re finished, join me out in the living area. Deal?”

He hated himself for being a little scared of taking a shower without someone really close by. When he showered in medical, someone was sitting in his room which the bathroom was connected to. Pepper was now choosing to leave him alone completely to shower. She was the most understanding and preceptive person on the entire planet, so there was no way she didn’t know that he was actually scared to be left alone after being, you know, kidnapped. This had to be her way of helping him, so he agreed, and she left, and he tried not to panic alone in his room.

The shower was a lot more satisfying that he anticipated. The shower in medical was a shower, functional and all, but the shower in his room was more personal because it was his shower set up the way he wanted with settings he was familiar with and his favorite shampoo and stuff. The only thing that would have made that shower better was if he had brought in a chair to sit on, but the edge of the tub was enough when he needed a break. He had good music and hot water. It wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Getting dressed after his shower was a little more worrisome but he made it through fine. He put on the comfiest clothes he had that were acceptable to wear out in public because he was trying to be comfortable and not fashionable. He was so tired again. Getting ready for doing nothing took a lot out of him and he was ready for bed, but he told Pepper that he would try, so he was trying. He grabbed his softest blanket and limped his way to the living area like Pepper told him to.

There was nobody in the room when he arrived, but the TV was on with a movie paused, so Pepper had prepared for him. He sat down on the couch and put his leg up on the table. In a situation like that, he would definitely pull his phone out and find something on there to entertain him and take him out of reality, but he didn’t have that option, so he stared intently at the paused logo on the screen, trying to make a bet with himself over what the movie was going to be.

Probably the biggest reason he didn’t want his phone, aside from the fact that he’d feel bad ignoring his friends when he could see their texts, was that he’d end up on the internet looking to see what people were saying. That was going to hurt a lot whenever he managed to log onto Twitter and do a Google search. If he had his phone at that moment, he would have sent himself into a spiral. He was not ready. He knew he was not ready. He liked to pretend he was ready for things he wasn’t ready for, like when he went to school on the anniversary of May’s death, so the fact that he knew and was willing to admit that he was not ready scared him slightly.

Unsurprisingly, he started to doze off while he was waiting for Pepper to come back. She woke him up when she sat a tray of food on the coffee table near his leg. He jumped awake, not necessarily scared but still startled. “You can go to bed if you want,” she said, taking a seat on the couch. “You’re willing to sit out here even though you’re falling asleep, so I count that as a victory for now.”

“No, I’ll stay up,” he said. “I’m hungry anyways. We watching a good movie?”

The pause screen was just a black screen with the pause logo. It wasn’t much to go on, but Peter had been willing to put money on the movie being the live-action remake of The Lion King. He was convinced for absolutely no reason. “I think so,” she said. “I haven’t had the chance to watch the next Jumanji movie yet. I wasn’t sure if you watched it or not, but I know it has to be funny enough to watch a second time.”

He was super wrong, but he wasn’t mad about it. “I haven’t seen it yet, actually,” he said. “It’s going to be the funniest movie of my life.”

If the movie hadn’t been as funny as it was, he definitely would have fallen asleep during it. He found himself coming close a few times, but he worked hard to stay awake. He could only manage half of his plate before he felt close to becoming nauseous. It was nice just spending time with someone with no pressure to talk, no pressure to smile, no pressure to ignore the bad because she wasn’t there to talk, she knew he wasn’t perfectly happy, and she was already aware of the bad. She was a lot easier to hang out with.

The next day was a Saturday, a full week since he had been rescued, and he woke up in his own bed, on his own, before noon. YouTube videos were still playing in the background from his TV after he fell asleep catching up on some of his favorite channels for the first time since the kidnapping. He had to admit he felt a lot better than he did the day before. It was hard to tell what factors went into him feeling a lot healthier. Was it the fact that he ate more food than previously, slept a semi-normal amount, existed in a different space? It could have been anything, even just watching some uplifting funny stuff.

Tony was sitting in the living room when Peter exited his room. He hadn’t seen him in probably at least a day, though times were hard to tell after how much sleep he had. Tony hadn’t been around the night before when Peter and Pepper were hanging out. “Pep told me she relocated you,” Tony said once he saw Peter. “How was your first night back in your room?”

“It feels normal,” Peter admitted. He was leaning against the wall, tired from the walk already. “Like, I thought it would feel like a bigger deal than it did, but it was just me going to sleep in my room like I have almost every night for over a year.”

“That’s not true.”

It took Peter a moment to see what Tony was getting at before he rolled his eyes. “My room here or at the Tower – it’s still my room.”

Tony smirked a little big, though it did feel flat. “Sit down. You don’t need to be standing right now.”

“I’m working on it. My muscles feel too tight to move comfortably.”

When Peter did make it to the couch, Tony put the TV on mute and turned so they were looking directly at each other. “I have an update on Rich.”

Part of him wanted to get anxious. The other part was becoming kind of numb to the situation and the person. “What is it?”

“He was sick, and he knew it. We didn’t pull his medical records because, honestly, why would we? But we found some prescription meds at his place, so we pulled the records. He had terminal cancer. We think that influenced his decision to, you know, become a supervillain. It isn’t an important update, but I knew you’d probably get mad if you found out in a few months and then find out that we already knew.”

What a stupid way to spend the remainder of his life. “He wanted to die, then,” Peter concluded. “If he wanted to live, he would have bargained with you to help him beat cancer rather than what he actually did.”

Tony hummed in agreement. He seemed more anxious to end that conversation that Peter was. “Ned called me a couple hours ago. He said that, while he respects your need to keep to yourself, he will continue to, in his own words, ‘harass’ us until you call him back so he can hear from you that you’re okay.”

“He saw what happened. _Everybody_ saw what happened. How can I talk to him after that? I haven’t even watched what happened yet, and I don’t want to, so I don’t know what he saw. I don’t remember things.”

“You don’t need to talk about it. If Ned tries, tell him no.”

“Talking to him isn’t the only issue, though. He still knows. He knows something that bad and horrific in detail because he saw it with his own eyes. It isn’t like when I talk to him about something, because I could tell and control how many details I give him and help him perceive it in a way that isn’t as bad.”

When Tony responded, he did so with a lot of tension in his slightly raised voice. “That doesn’t matter, Peter. None of that matters. You survived. That’s what everybody watched. Everybody watched a scared teenager fight for his life. Everybody watched somebody on the brink of death _not give up_. You were dying. Actually dying. Aside from you fighting to live, I don’t know how you survived. With the amount of shit in your system, you’re more than just lucky to be sitting here right now with me. The entire world didn’t see Peter Parker getting beat up and tortured; the entire world saw Peter Parker fighting. There is no shame in that.”

“Why do you sound mad at me?”

“Because you’re hiding from people you love, from people who love you, because you’re, what, afraid of them knowing what happened? That’s not going to make it _not_ exist.”

“I know that!” Peter yelled back, stopping Tony from talking anymore. “It happened, and everybody knows it, and no matter what I do or don’t do, that’s going to remain a fact. I don’t remember most of it happening, but I know it happened, and I hate the fact that everybody knows something about me that I don’t know. I hate that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, I’m the person with a sob story for a life, and you guys all look at me like that, and I look at me like that, and my friends look at me like that, and now my school is gonna look at me like that. I’m the person who almost died on live television, and I can’t control that, but I _can_ control who I talk to until I process, because I’m not exactly processing what happened just yet.”

“No, what you’re doing is sleeping and pretending it didn’t happen while the rest of us gotta just be okay with the fact that this giant ordeal happened. You’re not processing because you’re never awake long enough to, and you won’t talk about it, and you’re hiding out away from everyone and everything because you don’t _want_ to process.”

“I wasn’t in my suit.” The yelling Peter was doing turned into tearful yelling. “I was in school. I was supposed to be safe, and this was never supposed to happen. I didn’t want this to happen.”

“Nobody wanted this to happen!” Tony said. He was now on his feet. “Not a single person wanted to watch that or know it was happening or not know where you were.”

“ _I_ was the one who went through this,” Peter said. He took a little longer to get to his feet than Tony did, but he was now standing, as well. “It was me. Not you, not Ned, not anybody. Me. It may have been awful for you all, too, but I was the one tied to that chair, drugged out of my mind, not even knowing what day it was, or how long I was gone, or what was going on. I was the one who couldn’t even think about what part of me was hurting because it was all hurting, and the one who could only smell throw up, and the one who couldn’t even remember the _name_ of the man who took me. I’m the one in pain from it still. I’m the one who’s still not convinced that he’s dead which means he’s going to come after me _again_. I’m the one who can’t be brave because wearing my mask gives me strength, and I was just Peter when he took me. Dad, it was _me_ , and every single time I try to think about it, I remember looking around and seeing black and hearing your voice and not knowing how I was going to find you.”

There were a lot of tears being shed between Peter and Tony. Peter was crying because now he was talking about the event which is not what he wanted.

“And now the entire world knows how I look and act in the face of death, _but I don’t._ ” Tony reached forward and pulled Peter into a hug, one tighter than probably any hug the two have ever shared. Peter cried into his shoulder, squeezing him back as tight as he could manage for once. He never could hug him as tight as possible because he was too strong, but he didn’t have anywhere near his normal strength. “Now I don’t even feel like Spider-Man anymore. I feel sick and tired and weak.”

“Because you are sick and tired and weak,” Tony said as he stroked Peter’s hair. “But you’re getting healthy and you’re staying awake longer and you’re building your strength.” 

Peter said something very heartbreaking next. “I really don’t want to keep living through these bad things. It just leads to more bad things, and now you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad, not at you. I’m so sorry. You’re right, you were the one who went through it, not me.”

Tony, arguably, was crying harder than Peter was. It sounded like he had been holding them in. “Dad, I’m okay. I’m here now.”

“You don’t comfort me, I comfort you. That’s how these things work.”

“It wasn’t fair for anybody,” Peter said. “I’m sorry.”

“You got nothing to be sorry for. Absolutely nothing.”

Their moment was over. It was a long moment that didn’t end for quite a while, but it did cease to exist so suddenly that it almost felt like it didn’t happen. Tony pulled away from Peter once both of them stopped crying and then he sat down on the couch, unmuted the television, and asked Peter what he wanted to watch, and that was it. That was the end of their moment.

Pepper brought lunch into the room an hour or so later. She didn’t look shocked that Peter was in the room, but he knew she hadn’t known because there were only two plates on the tray. “I put yours in the fridge. I didn’t know you were awake. I’ll go grab it for you.”

“I’m sorry,” he prefaced, “but can you bring me a soda?”

“On your sensitive stomach?” Tony questioned before Pepper slapped the top of his head, to which he smacked her hands away. “That was just mean.”

“He can have whatever he wants,” she said. “Let him make his own decisions, even if they will be mistakes.”

“I’m not gonna drink all of it,” Peter defended.

After he finished his lunch (actually finished it, too. All gone. He was oddly proud) and took a few sips of the soda, he asked for his phone. Pepper pulled it out of her pocket and handed it over along with his charger because of course she just had it readily available on her person. She didn’t give him a look or say anything. Tony didn’t give him a look or say anything, but he did grab the charger and plug it in to the couch (because he was rich and had the _coolest_ furniture).

If it was any other phone besides a Stark phone, it would have taken a little while to start up again with all the notifications that kept popping up as it tried to catch him up on all that he had missed. He had missed calls from everybody he had ever met in his entire life and hundreds of text messages. He read through the text messages from people who weren’t Ned, MJ, or an Avenger (and yes, there were quite a few from the team, surprisingly) to get them out of the way, and they were all schoolmates, naturally, but mostly the Decathlon team. They all said basically the same thing; I’m thinking about you, hope you’re okay, I’m so sorry for what you went through. Flash did send more of a personal text, though, the day he was kidnapped and the day he was found, and Peter felt compelled to respond.

 **Flash** : Dude I just saw that ur missing is that true or did u just disappear again

 **Flash** : I know we dont talk and arent friends or anything but I never thought something like that could happen to u. Im sry for everything I put u through. Hope to see u back in school soon

 **Peter:** Thanks dude hopefully I’ll be back by next week

All he did was skim through Ned’s and MJ’s texts once he got around to them because he couldn’t take the time to read them all. Mostly Ned’s. MJ didn’t spam him, only leaving him a few sad texts that made his heart hurt. He started typing a text in their group, but then he sighed quietly to himself. That would make him such a horrible person. He’d have to call them.

“I’ll be back in a little bit,” he said. Tony nodded an okay, no doubt knowing where he was going.

The only proper way to video call them was on Snapchat so that he could use all the fun filters if things got too deep or serious. MJ answered first, looking at her camera in what looked like disbelief. “Peter? I honestly didn’t think it would be you when I saw the video notification.”

“Yeah, well…” He laughed awkwardly because he was awkward. “Here I am.”

“You look…better than I expected. It’s relieving.”

Ned’s face popped up next and he was almost too excited for words because he started off just making noises and what might had been attempts to say words. “Hi, Ned,” Peter finally greeted, hoping that would help him find proper vocabulary.

“You’re _here_. You have your _phone_. I’m talking to _you_ instead of _Tony_ or _Pepper_. This is so wild, man, I wasn’t expecting this. How are you doing, dude? What have you been doing to pass the time without a cell phone? You must have binged so many shows by now.”

That felt a lot more lighthearted than Peter anticipated which made him relax a lot. “And what about you? I am your source of entertainment, so you must have been bored out of your mind.”

They talked for at least two hours. At least. Not once did they ask Peter about what happened. Instead, they talked about everything else. It was nice and refreshing. It made him want to socialize with them for as long as he could, but everything had to end at some point, just like their conversation. He was yawning more than he was talking and he had gotten himself too comfortable in his bed while they talked, so MJ finally stepped up and said that they’d get off and let him rest as long as he promised to text them soon, which he promised.

What he expected to happen when he eventually got his phone did happen. He couldn’t help himself and looked up the footage that was aired live to the world. He looked like a dead man sitting on a chair with eyes barely opened. He watched himself as he busted out the handcuffs and busted through the rope, a memory that he kind of had which was better than all the memories he didn’t have at all. He watched when he fought back, watched as he talked to Tony, and watched as he escaped before he had to fight back _again_. He had to listen as he fought back off camera before Tony came to save him. He listened to the man talking, hinting strongly that Peter was Spider-Man. He listened as the man said he wanted to take Peter with him when he escaped with Tony’s money. Most of what he watched didn’t feel familiar, not even with reliving the experience.

Still, despite not having the memories, he had the anxiety. He was super overwhelmed by the end of the footage when Tony saved him. He went through all of that. He really did. How could that be? He was standing up by the end of the video, too uncomfortable to lay or sit any longer. He wanted to move and pace, but pacing was too much for him, so he was just standing still right beside his bed.

Four days. He had been gone for four days. Four days without eating, drinking, moving. Four days of being drugged beyond belief. Four days of dying from the inside out. “Friday, can you get, uh, someone for me? Please?” He was about to freak out and really didn’t want to freak out.

Both Pepper and Tony came in the room, so they must’ve both been in the living room. “What is it, Underoos?” Tony asked.

“I, uh, I watched the footage,” he said. “You knew I’d never be able to control myself. I don’t really remember, uh, anything after watching that, and I kind of thought I might, but I didn’t, and, uh, watching it is kind of…”

Pepper grabbed both of his hands gently. “You’re okay,” she said quietly. “You saw what you survived. Let it empower you.”

Tony mentioned before that he was sleeping rather than dealing with it, and Peter fully agreed with him at that moment. He was falling asleep before, but now he was wide awake and he still wanted to be asleep. It was getting increasingly harder to breathe. “It hurt.”

“I know it hurt you,” she said, now holding his face in her hands. “I know you’re still hurt. But you’re alive. _You_ fought to stay alive. You kept yourself alive. You’re so brave, and you’re so strong, and you’re so important to this world. You beat what should have been certain death. You’re here with us right now. You survived. Don’t let this break you down.”

Peter lifted his head towards the sky, closed his eyes, and took a few deep breaths. “Today has been hard,” he said.

“And you’re making it through it,” Tony said, speaking for the first time since entering the room. “You’re doing fantastic, and you’re gonna continue to be fantastic.”

“Fantastic,” Peter repeated. The adjective did not fit.

The next day is when he decided to make his rounds with the team. It was time to visit them and let them see him. Shortly having lunch, he went over to the common area to see who was all there. He assumed at least a few of them were at the Tower, but after talking to Friday, she disclosed that all of them were at the Compound with him because they all wanted to be close. They were all heading to the Tower later that afternoon, though. Tony, Pepper, and Peter were going to drive at Peter’s request rather than take a quinjet.

Peter didn’t let Pepper or Tony know what he was doing, so he went over alone. He was still limping, but it was significantly less than he had been, so he felt like he was healing a little bit more. When he went over, he saw freaking _everyone in the world_ in the Avengers area. Natasha, Steve, Clint, Sam, and Wanda were all sitting there. “Oh…uh…oh,” he said lamely. “Shit.”

“Language,” Natasha and Clint both said at the same time. Natasha was smirking as she said it.

Wanda was the one who got up, ran over, and gave him a hug. “Petey, goodness, hello, I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she was saying.

She was the only one to get up and hug him. The rest had a slightly better sense of boundaries, but Wanda wasn’t in the wrong or anything. She was a much more touchy, huggy, emotiony person and he’d never fault her for that.

“I’ll be the one to get your look of anger for asking you this, but how are you feeling?” Sam asked.

“Better now that you made that question sound funny instead of serious,” Peter answered. “I was coming to say hi to you all. I just wasn’t expecting so many of you sitting here. It caught me off guard.”

“I feel like you’ll get over that,” Clint said. “You escaped the wardens?”

“They don’t hover at _all_ hours,” he said. “They give me some me time.”

“I feel like you escaped,” Steve said. “Do they know where you are?”

“Well, no, but that’s just cause they weren’t with me when I came over,” Peter said. He walked over to the couch and took a seat.

“You have a cast on your arm,” Sam acknowledged. “What’s up with that?”

Were they all out of the loop with everything by accident or did Tony and Pepper keep details sparse on purpose because if Peter didn’t want to talk to them, maybe they thought he didn’t want them to be updated, too? “I broke my wrist, and it’s still healing.”

“And the limp?”

“Messed up my knee. It’s getting better.”

“What’s inspired you to visit us?” Clint asked. “You finally start to miss us?”

“Somehow.”

Everybody except Clint laughed at that while Clint managed to pretend he wasn’t amused. “Okay, just for that, I’m revoking my offer to teach you how to shoot a bow.”

“You never offered to teach me how to shoot a bow.”

“Did I not say that out loud? Well, I said it in my brain, and you should have heard it somehow. It doesn’t matter now. Revoked!”

Clint was one of the funniest people Peter had ever met. Sometimes, he forgot that. “You are the most ridiculous person I think I have ever met, and you know Ned, so, well, congratulations on beating him out as the most ridiculous person.”

“You should still teach him how to shoot,” Steve tried to reason. “Then, when he becomes better than you, you can ask him for lessons.”

This was something Peter missed. He missed being able to hang out with the team and just _hang out_. They were so funny sometimes. It was a good time whenever he was with them. It took more time than expected for Tony to text him, asking where he was. Peter had to give him props for not calling him.

 **Peter:** Im with the fam

“We gotta take a group pic real quick,” Peter said in the middle of an unrelated conversation. Nobody questioned because their relationship was pretty much one where they just did as they were told. Thankfully, everybody else moved around Peter rather than have Peter get up to get closer to them. Steve was closest to him already so he moved over down the couch, so they were side-by-side directly. Wanda laid across both of their laps, already holding up a peace sign despite the camera not even being open yet. Sam moved closer to Steve so that Steve was in the middle of Sam and Peter. Clint came behind the couch Peter was sitting on and he sat on the back of the couch. Natasha moved stuff around on the coffee table so she can set Peter’s phone upright. She put a timer of ten seconds and she moved around the couch. She kept standing but wrapped her arms around Peter’s upper body in a hug. After the photo, she retrieved the phone and handed it over while nobody really went back to their initial seats. Steve and Sam sat more upright so they weren’t all bunched in and Natasha sat on the table, and they were all just going to exist that close now.

Also, Peter definitely sent that picture to Tony.

 **Tony:** It’s been a while since we’ve added any new pictures

 **Tony:** There’s a few people missing, though

 **Peter:** I dont know where anybody else is

 **Peter:** I make do with what I got

After a few moments, he heard five phones buzz and felt his own go off. It was Tony texting the large group.

 **Tony:** Emergency meeting in the AA

 **Tony:** That sounded dire but it really isn’t

 **Tony:** False alarm

 **Tony:** Emergency fun time in the AA

 **Rhodey:** You’re the only alcoholic here

 **Tony:** Avengers Area, asshole

 **Loki:** What is the Avengers Area

 **Tony:** When did you join the chat?

 **Sam:** When did you get a phone?

 **Natasha:** Do you even need to ask?

 **Peter:** Well he couldnt just not have a phone could he

 **Peter:** Nd he cant just not be in our group chat if he has a phone

 **Peter:** I added him so long ago did u guys all miss the notif

 **Peter:** It’s the common area where everybody always is

 **Happy:** Do I look like an Avenger

 **Peter:** Yes sir

Bucky was the first one to make it there, coming into the room at a slight jog. “Hey, pal,” he greeted, only talking to Peter. “Nice to see you up and moving.”

Peter woke up once with Bucky sitting in the room with him. He had pretended to still be asleep, but he knew Bucky had probably known. He felt rude for doing Bucky like that, but he also knew that Bucky would be the most understanding of anyone. He’d probably come visit Peter later that night and try to watch some Netflix with him like they did a lot on bad or overstimulating days, and he’d apologize then.

“I think we’re gonna take a new group picture when everyone gets here, so be prepared,” Peter said after giving Bucky a peace sign wave.

They took so many pictures once everybody made it. There were funny ones, normal ones, and roleplay ones (there was a cowboy one which was weird because none of them had cowboy hats at the ready (and the funny pictures were one hundred percent Wanda’s idea)). Bruce was the most dramatic, acting as if he could be doing anything else with his time, but it was the first time Peter saw Bruce actually smile during the past week. There were also some smaller group ones, so basically, that hour was one giant photo shoot. It was light-hearted enough that it was fun and not exhausting despite how much was going on.

As anticipated, Bucky came knocking at his door later that night. Peter was barely awake but was trying hard to make it until at least eleven o’clock before going to sleep. It was only nine, so he had a few hours to go. “‘Sup?” Peter greeted after calling out for him to come in.

“Will you get bad at me if I ask how you’re doing?”

“No. I’m okay. Bruce gave me some pain meds an hour ago, so I’m not hurting too bad.”

“Did he take the cast off your wrist yet?” he asked, and Peter held up his still-casted hand up in answer. “Do you know when it’ll be healed?”

“He said maybe a couple more days. It’s not completely broken anymore, so it is healing. Just slowly. Are you going to stand there weirdly all night or come get comfortable?” After Bucky was laying back on the other end of the bed, Peter opened up Netflix and then slid Bucky the remote to find something. “I’m sorry for ignoring you.”

“You were ignoring everybody, so I didn’t take it personally. We all heal differently, even if you’re very inconsistent with how you deal with things.”

That was true. Sometimes he was antisocial when dealing with things, sometimes he was freaking out when dealing with things, and other times he was the clingiest person when dealing with things. This time, he wasn’t so much antisocial as he was just straight up avoiding. “I woke up once and you were sitting there.”

“I know. Think I wouldn’t notice that? I know what fake sleeping looks like.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Like I said, I didn’t take it personally. If you needed time _not_ talking to or acknowledging anyone aside from Bruce, Tony, and Pepper, then I was more than willing to give you that time. I was sitting with you so you weren’t alone after I sent them off to shower and sleep in a real bed, but I wasn’t trying to trap you into talking to me.”

“Thanks for looking out for them,” Peter said genuinely.

Bucky nodded, not looking over at Peter. Things were quiet as Bucky tried to find something interesting to watch. Nothing was screaming at him, so he asked Peter, and Peter had the same response, so he just put on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, something the two of them had already watched together in the past. Before the movie even properly began, Bucky asked, “How are you really holding up? You were fun all afternoon and didn’t seem too bothered by anything, but I know that can’t be true. If you’ve already talked to Tony and Pepper about it and don’t want to talk again, or if you just don’t want to, you don’t have to talk about it with me. But if you want to, you can.”

Bucky was one of the easiest people to talk to. Most of the time, when Bucky pressed for something, Peter just opened up. “I’m doing a lot better than I have been,” he said honestly. “Yesterday was a really hard day. Me and my dad kind of fought a little bit, and I finally talked to my friends, and I watched the footage from that day, but, I don’t know, I’ve felt a little bit lighter after everything. Today helped a lot, too, with everybody kind of just letting me be and acting as if what happened didn’t just happen. It was a low-pressure day.”

“What did you and Tony fight about?”

Honestly, what _did_ they fight over? “I think he was getting frustrated because I’m trying to ignore the bad stuff, so we just, I don’t know, started yelling. I forgot that just because I physically went through what I went through didn’t mean that the rest of you weren’t affected, too.”

“It was your trauma, though. You deal with that however works for you. It isn’t about the rest of us.”

“I know that, and he knew that. It was just, I dunno, he was sad, and I was sad, and we fought. We’re okay now. We got it out.”

“So, you being like that today wasn’t you putting on a happy face for the rest of us?”

“I’m not jumping for joy or anything like that, but no, I wasn’t trying to fool any of you. I was scared when I first went over to see you guys, but everybody was pretty chill.”

“You’re still awake, too, so I’m taking that as a good sign.”

“I didn’t take a single nap today. I’m beyond exhausted, but I’m trying to stay awake until eleven. I’ll call it quits at the end of the movie.”

“Ten bucks you fall asleep during the movie.”

“I love easy money. You’re on.”

Bucky won the ten dollars.


End file.
